


They Also Serve

by Rod



Category: Without a Trace
Genre: AU, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-06 06:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/732574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rod/pseuds/Rod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Martin Fitzgerald's father wasn't Deputy Director of the FBI?  What if Martin had another reason entirely for wanting to be an agent?</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Also Serve

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** They all belong to Bruckheimer, Steinberg and CBS, apart from anything bent, folded, mutilated or spindled, which is mine.

There was something to be said about cases involving missing children, Danny thought. Not that he particularly wanted any kids to go missing, it was just that anything to do with children brought out an intense concentration in Martin that fascinated Danny. He would find himself sitting in case conferences, like right now, ostensibly paying attention to the details Jack was adding to the bare timeline in front of them while in reality watching Martin focus on the case as if it were his son that had disappeared.

He was envious if he was being honest, which he wasn't all that often where Martin was concerned. Martin was a very closed person, Danny had realised quite early on, and to see all that intensity on a case while Martin barely paid attention to his colleagues, well it seemed wrong. That was why Danny had appointed himself distractor-in-chief to Martin; someone had to stop Martin from disappearing entirely into work, and Danny was ready and willing to step up to the plate. If that meant that he was the one to attract part of that intensity, to cause one of Martin's rare but dazzling smiles, well then it was only right and proper that he should feel good at a job well done.

Not that most of their colleagues were any help. Jack didn't seem to like Martin much and didn't try to hide it, Vivian was friendly enough but in that I-am-your-Mom-and-you-will-do-what-I-say way of hers, and Sam... Sam had made a play for Martin two or three times, and each time Martin had responded until inevitably another child case had arisen. Each time Sam had abruptly come second to the job in Martin's eyes, and try as she might she couldn't pretend to like that. That was the whole reason she was chasing after Martin instead of Jack in the first place, Danny thought snidely.

Abruptly, Danny's attention was dragged back to the here and now. Martin had sat up straight and was hanging on Jack's every word. He actually looked more intensely involved in the case, something that Danny hadn't thought possible. Danny had to backtrack to work out what Jack had been saying to get Martin so interested. Something about a toy soldier being found near where Joey Masseni had been seen last?

"So you're thinking kidnapping," Martin stated more than asked.

Jack nodded. "Time's going to be critical on this one, and just to make it worse we've got another case to run in parallel." He tossed a folder casually on the table and stuck another photograph up on the whiteboard. "Richard Braun, aged 33, reported missing by his wife along with his car, his laptop and a large chunk of their savings. Unfortunately Mrs Braun has the ear of some people higher up our food chain so we do have to look into it. Martin, you take that, everyone else is on the Masseni case."

Martin flinched as if he'd been slapped. "What?" he demanded.

"Are you saying you can't handle a husband skipping town?" Jack asked. He held Martin with a challenging stare for a long moment as Martin struggled to find something to say, then stalked off to his office.

Martin spent several seconds visibly trying to calm down then followed Jack, leaving the Braun file on the conference table. Danny watched along with Vivian and Sam as the two of them confronted one another. Martin was gesticulating wildly, the most emotion Danny could remember him showing over anything. "Wow," he said quietly. "What the hell set him off?"

"He's just upset because he's not getting to work on the high profile case," Sam suggested. She didn't sound entirely convinced, though, and didn't look offended when Danny snorted.

"Nah," he said, "you know Martin better than that. Something about this case is really bugging him."

"Whatever it is is his business, not ours," Vivian told them. She tore her eyes away from the confrontation long enough to stare at Danny and Sam. "Don't you have work to be doing?"

They did indeed. By the time Martin stormed out of Jack's office, started reading through the Braun case file and snarled at anyone who dared to come within three metres of him, Danny was up to his neck in the Masseni family's financial transactions. That lead to him being sent round to find out if the toy soldier was Joey's, which it wasn't. His parents' reaction however was suspicious enough to make Danny turn on the charm and get them to admit that yes, they had received a ransom demand and yes, it did mention the soldier as a sign the kidnapper knew what he was talking about.

Leaving the Massenis with a tech team cheerfully bugging their phones and a dispiriting sense that the kidnapper was too smart to throw them any clues that way, Danny made it back to the office to find Martin and Sam both out. Before he could find Vivian and ask where they were, and not incidentally whether Jack had relented and let Martin in on the case, Jack collared him for every detail the Massenis had given him.

"I'm guessing we won't get anything from the phone tap," he finished glumly. "The guy's been cagey so far, he's professional enough to not leave us anything obvious apart from the toy."

Jack nodded. "The print lab came back with nothing useful on that," he said. "The kidnapper's a pro."

"Assuming he is," Vivian said as she walked up to them, "here's the best match for the M.O. that we have right now." She handed a folder to Jack. He barely flipped the file open before grunting and handing it on to Danny. "You could at least pretend to be surprised," Vivian told him.

Danny gave a low whistle. "Has this guy really been in the kidnapping business for over twenty years and no one's brought him in yet?"

"Nearer to thirty," Jack said. "He's a clever bastard, so far he's kept one step ahead of every investigation going. God knows what name he's been living under, even. But every child he takes, he leaves another piece of himself behind. We'll get him."

Vivian looked like she was going to say something at Jack's confident assertion, but seemed to decide against it and favoured him with a mildly sceptical look instead. Danny couldn't help feeling that he was missing something, but he didn't get the chance to stop and ponder as Jack sent him out to canvass the area around the Masseni's home with photos of both young Joey and their top suspect, though the latter photo had to be at least a decade old.

He spent a good hour getting nowhere with the neighbours before the public responses started trickling in. Jack promptly pulled him and Sam to follow up on reported sightings of Joey and a man. Most of them were so vague as to be useless, one or two were prank calls that somehow slipped through the screening, and a couple even turned out to be deliberate misdirections. Still, they had to check out everything. Sometimes finding someone was a matter of picking up on the smallest of clues, and this time Danny didn't think that any big clues were going to be left around for them.

It was late by the time they got back to the office, tired and dispirited. Vivian immediately grabbed Sam to go over the details of the false trails they reckoned the kidnapper had to have set up, leaving Danny trying to make sense of the facts and faces spread across the whiteboard.

The trouble was, he thought, that there didn't seem to be a lot of sense for him to make. He had that tantalising feeling that there were connections to be drawn, but his exhausted brain couldn't put things together. He'd spent all day with his nose right down in the details, and right now he couldn't step back far enough to see the big picture. He needed a break.

Looking round he saw Martin back at his desk, ploughing manfully through a pile of paperwork. While Martin didn't seem as pissed off at the world, or more accurately Jack, as he had that morning, he was looking nearly as weary as Danny felt. It couldn't have been any fun for him today, working on his own without the moral support of anyone else to bounce ideas off. He needed a break too.

Well, Danny could work with that. He planted his usual grin on his face and walked up to Martin's desk. "Hey," he said softly.

Martin looked up, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "Sorry," he said almost automatically. "It's been a long day."

"I'll bet. When was the last time you ate?"

"I..." Martin paused, clearly not quite ready for that question.

"If you have to think about it, it's too long ago."

"I grabbed something at lunchtime!"

Danny smirked. "And knowing you, you didn't stop reading reports while you ate it. Come on, Martin, you need a break. I need a break, for that matter, and there's this little place just off the Plaza that does ravioli like you wouldn't believe."

Martin looked uncertainly from Danny to the papers and back, so Danny tried the puppy-dog eyes. Martin shook his head, laughing. "I give in," he said, raising his hands in surrender. "Lead on."

It wasn't long before the two of them were comfortably seated in the cozy restaurant Danny preferred. The waiters came and went with their customary efficiency, and Martin seemed almost surprised to find a glass of white wine in front of himself and a mineral water in front of Danny.

"That bad, huh?" Danny asked.

Martin shook his head. "Not really. It's just... it's just been a frustrating day all round."

"Tell me about it. You want to talk about the case?"

"No." Martin must have realised how sharp he sounded, because he flashed an apologetic look at Danny. "It's boring, that's all."

"Come on, Fitzy," Danny said with a sly grin. "You show me yours and I'll show you mine."

Whatever reaction Danny was expecting to his playful remark, a resurgence of the anger Martin had been nursing all day wasn't it. "This is all one big joke to you, isn't it?" he said coldly. "You think you can take everything I've ever worked towards, the whole reason I joined the FBI, and... This was a mistake. I should get back to work."

He started to push his chair away from the table and stand, but Danny quickly caught his hand. "Whoa! I'm sorry," he said, completely serious. "I didn't mean it like that. I just thought you wanted to be in on the loop, even if Jack's still being an ass about letting you work on it."

Martin seemed to deflate in front of his eyes. "I must be too tired if I'm letting it get to me that badly," he admitted. "I know you better than that." It wasn't an apology, but Danny decided to take it as such anyway.

"It's a professional job," Danny said quietly. Martin looked up at him, and he gave a tiny shake of the head. Now was not the time for probing questions, he wouldn't do that to Martin while he was in this state. Instead he carried on quietly filling in the progress they'd made since the morning briefing. Martin listened intently, nodding occasionally and barely seeming to notice when their food arrived. It felt weird to Danny to have Martin hanging on his every word like that, but he'd have been lying if he said he didn't like it.

"Viv thinks we may be able to find something in the background noise of the distraction calls," he finished up. "At least the ones from disposable phones, if they didn't stray too far."

"That might work," Martin allowed. He didn't all that enthusiastic about the idea, though.

"Hey, at least Viv's come up with a prime suspect, the apparently infamous Victor Fitz... gerald... oh crap."

Martin dropped his gaze as realisation came crashing down on Danny. Victor Fitzgerald. He had to have been blind not to see it, not to wonder why Martin picked up on the signature toy soldier so quickly. Hell, even the old photo of Victor bore a distinct resemblance to Martin.

"I used to think he was the most wonderful father any kid could have," Martin said, not looking up as he toyed with the last of his pasta. "He'd just appear without warning, take me away from Mom for a few days and make everything exciting. There'd be presents and toys for me, just like Christmas had come early. And there would always be someone around my age to play with, someone new to make friends with. Just for a couple of days."

He looked up, and Danny could see the tears starting to form in his eyes. "I know how many kids my father has kidnapped over the years. I know how many of them never went back to their parents. I know exactly how many of them I played with before my father disposed of them."

Martin's voice broke on the last words, and Danny's heart ached for him. Martin the boy had been innocent, and Martin the man could never forgive himself. He leaned forwards and gently laid his hand over Martin's.

"That's one hell of a cloud to live under," he said softly. "You know it's not your fault, don't you? You couldn't have known, and your dad counted on that. You don't have to prove yourself by bringing him in."

"It's why I joined up, Danny. My fault or not, I still helped him kidnap a dozen kids. How else am I supposed to make up for something like that?"

Danny licked his lips. He didn't want to say this, but it had to be said. "I think maybe Jack's right. You can't do this yet." Martin looked bewildered for a moment, then Danny saw the hurt creep into his eyes. "You're too close," Danny continued quickly. "You may know what's going on in his head, but it's still too personal for you and that's the way stupid things happen."

"What's the point then? What's the point in dedicating my life to something I'm not allowed to do?"

"I said 'yet', Martin. You're a damn good agent and I'm glad to have you at my back any time, but you've got to learn to step back or this'll consume you."

"How the hell am I supposed to do something like that? This is my damn father we're talking about, how am I supposed to not care about what he does?"

"You can care. Don't even try not caring, that's not what it's about. As for how..." Danny took a deep breath. "Hi, my name's Danny and I'm an alcoholic. I quit drinking seven years ago. I still want it every damn day, but I step back. If I can do that, even after a day of having to tell families that all we've found are dead bodies, then you can do it too."

Martin looked a bit shocked. "Twelve steps for people trying to lock up their parents, huh?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of 'twelve steps for people who try too hard,' but whatever works." Danny grinned at Martin, trying to lighten the mood a little.

"I don't know if I can do this. I... It's been my whole life for so long now."

"I know it's hard," Danny told him. "But if you want, I'll be with you every step of the way."

Martin smiled tentatively, a small sunrise that had Danny grinning like a loon. "You know," Martin said, "I never know what to make of you. Why do you do this? Why are you the one sitting here doing the intervention, not Vivian or Sam or Jack?"

"I'm prettier," Danny said automatically. Martin rolled his eyes. "Seriously though, we haven't got so many good agents we can afford to lose someone like you. Even if I have to sit with you so long your neighbours start to talk."

"Danny, you've been holding my hand for the last five minutes. They're already talking."

"I can live with that." Funnily enough, he could. Hanging with Martin, he didn't really care what anyone else thought about it.

"Sure you can. They're not your neighbours."

"At least they won't be complaining about your taste."

"In men, maybe. If you start on my ties, there will be trouble."

Danny blinked. Was Martin actually flirting with him? Martin, who barely flirted with Sam when they were going out together? Martin, who was showing no signs of wanting Danny to let go of his hand? Martin, who was beginning to look a little panicked that Danny wasn't saying anything.

"You have taste in men?" he asked.

"Look, forget I said anything—" Martin started to pull his hand away, but stopped when Danny tightened his grip.

"Uh-uh, this is where you're supposed to say something about good-looking latinos with fashion sense to spare."

"You mean...?" Martin looked guardedly hopeful, and Danny had to grin. The warm feeling he got from just seeing that reaction was all the answer he needed.

"Apparently my taste runs to anal-retentive white over-achievers. Who'd've thought it?"

Martin's smile widened, but Danny couldn't help but notice the anxiety still lurking in his face. And if he'd been obsessing enough over Martin to read him that closely and not realised it, he really had to have words with his subconscious.

"Is this for real, Danny?" Martin asked. "I need to know." Danny heard the unspoken plea, that Martin couldn't cope with both his father and Danny playing with him.

"Seriously? All I'm sure of is how not freaked out I am by the whole idea. You matter to me, whether this whole thing between us works out or not you'll always matter. I can't tell you that I'll be OK with everything because I've never even thought about it before now, but I want to try. The best I can promise is that I want to be with you, however that works out."

Martin nodded slowly, the anxiety leaking away as he took in the sincerity in Danny's voice. Then he straightened up and unclasped his hands from Danny's.

"Come on," he said. "We'd better get back to the office."

"How can you think about work at a time like this?"

"The sooner we get done, the sooner we can start seeing how things work out," Martin said, grinning broadly now.

Danny laughed with him. That was a plan he could live with, for sure.


End file.
